T.01.03 Phenomenon

In Which Cars Crash

In the first part of the chapter we learn that Bella is still very clumsy. This fact will be hammered home quite a bit over the course of the book. At length. Clumsy. Gym class seems to exist in Bella's world purely to focus on this fact. SM treats this as a major character flaw, but it hardly seems like a problem that makes Bella more realistic. It's comedic, sort of, for the moment, and it provides some story outside the fledgling relationship (currently infatuation vs. ignoring/hating) that we're allegedly rooting for, but it doesn't give the depth to Bella that SM seems to want. It's also dangerously close to being an excuse for things to just randomly happen because Bella has terrible luck. It'd be one thing if this were a comedy and her ludicrous clutzitude were the underlying theme, but here it just gets annoying. Further, it undermines Bella as a protagonist and sets her up as a constant damsel in distress, apparently for Edward to start saving. People don't root for damsels in distress, they root for the knight. See Shrek for the proper skewering of that story type. Personally, I cheer for the dragon.

We are told repeatedly going in that Bella is goofy for Edward (naturally) and has a lot of suitors for a ghostly-pale girl with tangled hair that has been at FHS for less than two weeks.

It's also snowed (nice environmental note, except that it only appears because it means something) and in a very nice moment (that will be ruined) Charlie has put chains on Bella's tires to keep her safe. I say ruined because it would be a very nice touch anywhere else in the book, but since it plays a minor plot point with the upcoming car crash, it loses most of its luster. Play this kind of thing for characterization!

And now, the crash.
It is confusing.
It is important.
If only the events and afterefects actually made sense, that importance would be vastly enhanced.
It is, again, so very important.

Bella parks nose-in (the tan car is described as "next to" her rather than "in front of" or "behind" as with parallel parking) at FHS in a line of cars in a parking lot. She notes Ed 4 cars further along. So we have Bella's truck, tan car, some other car, Vampire Volvo + Ed in a line. Bella parks and is standing behind her truck when a van, driven by yet-to-be-introduced Tyler, comes skidding directly at her. But from WHERE? If this is a side by side lot of cars, the van must have been driving perpendicular to them, making its way toward Bella from her & her truck's side. The book makes it seem like it's coming head on, from what must be another line of parked cars across the aisle. Maybe there's an entrance directly across from Bella, but I'm not convinced I'm getting the picture here.

Let's say that Bella is parked facing WEST in a line of cars that runs NORTH-SOUTH.  We'll more or less ignore where it is that Tyler comes from. Edward is 4 cars North of Bella at the start of this section. The van smashes into the "corner" of Bella's truck bed, right where she's standing. This means Bella is standing at her rear, driver-side bumper (the SE corner of her truck) and the van hits that corner more or less at a 45 degree angle ("It was going to hit the back corner of my truck"). So the van was driving North (or West, but ends up going North). Edward magics himself in the way and knocks Bella down. Somehow he comes from the NORTH and knocks Bella down back to the NORTH so she's now behind the tan car. It doesn't fit with the description of "hitting her from the wrong direction". That aside, Tyler's van is still somehow moving, wrapping around the rear bumper of Bella's truck and continuing NORTH toward the tan car. Edward reaches out and stops the pirouetting van as it hits the back of the tan car & Bella.

That part is somewhat decipherable with a bit of re-reading and assumptions. I think Ed somehow sent Bella in the opposite direction he should have, but whatever. It isn't over, though, because the accident continues into yet another paragraph. Although Bella is in some sort of protective bubble of metal and although the van is described as "stopped", Edward superhumanly moves her either under the tan car or between the tan car and her truck so she slams her legs into one of the tan car's tires. Then the van (which again, had "stopped") settles down with a crunch. So stopped = no longer moving in any compass direction, but it's now up on two wheels? How does that happen from hitting the truck or tan car? Why was this final movement a danger to Bella? It seems like she was fine between the van and tan car or at least in a Edward sized dent in the thing. Later, it takes a team of people to extract them, which means she actually can't be next to the car (safely between it and her truck) because she'd have an easy exit (West, toward the front of her truck), so what tire is she sitting against? Is she UNDER the tan car with Edward?

I suppose it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but this is important to the story. It's a typical, cliche Romance Novel plot hook and here it has the added purpose of showing Bella that Edward is inhuman. I think I'm putting way more effort into understanding the blocking of this scene than a casual reader, and I'm still confused. Either SM didn't work this out properly, or she's doing a terrible job at telling us what the heck is going on.

After the glass settles, Edward attempts to convince Bella that he was right there the whole time despite her clearly remembering him NOT being right there when the van came. This is emphasized. A lot. Bella gets angry that he won't explain how he saved her. This goes on at length (apparently while the jaws of life are getting hooked up). This is extraordinarily annoying.

As point of comparison, I've been in one dangerous accident. I low-sided a motorcycle on a wet country road at modest speed. I wasn't seriously injured, didn't hit my head hard and wasn't involved in crushing, smashing metal bubbles with a person I was infatuated with. Even so, I remember nothing of the seconds  before the wreck and for five minutes after the crash, I couldn't have told you which direction I'd been riding or probably what year it was. The adrenaline, fear and shock of the event destroyed all sense of time, all sense of direction and quite a bit of short-term memory. I experienced slowly fading disorientation for hours.

Bella, however, has crystal clear memories of where people were prior to the accident and frustratingly insists that the more reasonable, albeit false, explanations trump her adrenaline and shock filled memories. This event is clearly going to play a major role in the growing relationship between Bella and Edward, and it is fatally flawed from the very start. Rather than have Bella confused by what others tell her about the accident and her conflicting memories, she has photographic memories and zero doubt. Rather than have Edward insist that her memories are wrong and stick ferociously to what should be the obvious and defensive survival strategy, he's going to play coy and mysterious and give her knowing looks and say things that hint that she's right but he's not going to tell. It's not just a squandered opportunity to advance the characters using the (poorly described) accident as a spark, it's people behaving as characters who know what kind of book they're in. Bella is playing the Romantic Novel Lead and Edward is playing some idiotic version of "Vampires who don't worry about being found out and stabbed with a wooden stake by a torch-bearing mob". Why? They've read the script. They know they end up together and are just going through the contractual requirements of a Romance Novel or Lifetime Movie and it all boils down to bad writing.

ARRGH!

Three things come out during the rescue from the tangle of storytelling: Edward thinks he can Jedi-Mind-Trick Bella. He's surprised when he can't. SM uses EYES way too much as a way to express character emotion.

His eyes blaze.
His eyes disorent.
His eyes have devastating force.

For the Twilight drinking game, I'm going to start with eyes emoting. So long as we don't get liquid eyes (a perpetual favorite of Anne Rice, the previous schlock vampire novel queen) I'll be OK.

Bella also calls dad Charlie consistently in this chapter, which will continue to be how she refers to him. I guess it establishes some distance between them.

We get a little more on Tyler = Tyler Crowlie, former van owner and bad driver. He's in her Govy class and is very remorseful. The hospital scene starts well, but then Doctor Hot Vampire arrives and is clearly not that worried that Bella is pulling back the veil on their secret life, undermining him entirely as a wise father figure.

Bella confronts Edward in the hospital about his promise to fess up the secret plot goods, he refuses and walks off without explanation. It's all very scripted. Worst line of the book so far: Bella: "Why did you bother (to save me)"  Edward: "I don't know".

After escaping the throngs of well-wishers and gawkers in the waiting room, Bella makes it home and naturally dreams of Edward.

SumUp D-
Our first vampire revelation and I hated it.

SMs descriptive prowess suffers from bad stage blocking (the cars are WHERE now?) and weak dialogue. Edward is mysterious. Daddy Vampirebucks is mysterious. They're both very hot. Neither seems capable of hiding the fact that they're blood-guzzling parasites who humans would rise up and massacre out of self defense if discovered. Bella's reaction to the crash and subsequent hospital stay are categorically impossible to swallow. A lot of the background stuff (people's reactions, general stuff) are done well, but it's all stagedressing. I'm also very concerned about Edward's apparent Jedi Mind Trick powers and Bella's imperiousness. It suggests that she's somehow special by birth rather than being special as a person in her mental prowess. Again, readers like to cheer for the everyman, someone who overcomes circumstances by grit and determination and spine, not someone who just happens to have the right DNA to not fall for the vampire juju. I really hope Bella isn't somehow vampire special, it's a crutch and I'm already having a tough time liking her as a protagonist.

The D- is charitable. I'm very, very frustrated by developments. Also, where's the titular Phenomenon?